


Hold

by isoisoashley



Series: Breathe [2]
Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Emotions, Gen, Samwell University, Therapy, letting go
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-28
Updated: 2017-08-28
Packaged: 2018-12-20 21:38:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11929779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/isoisoashley/pseuds/isoisoashley
Summary: In 2011, Alicia Zimmermann moves her son into the dorms and makes it all the way back down to the car before she realizes she's just not sure if she can drive away.





	Hold

Alicia’s hands are wrapped around the steering wheel, knuckles white as she grips hard in an effort to stay in the car. She’s said her goodbyes, already come back once with a hodgepodge of last minute pick-ups from the box store down the road. If she gets out of the car again, goes back up to the room, there’s no way she can pass it off as more than the normal parental concern.

 

Jack is staying at Samwell.

 

There’s no a better school for him, she knows (she hopes), than the one that helped her find herself all those years ago (how had it been so many years?). But it doesn’t stop the worry, doesn’t make it any easier to turn the key and drive away.

 

She closes her eyes, takes a deep breath, and swears she can still hear the faint _beep beep beep_ of a hospital heart monitor echoing in her ears.

 

She lets out the breath, slowly, as she leans forward to press her head against the wheel. Prays no one has recognized her and is taking pictures through the window.

 

 _Alicia Zimmermann Has Breakdown at Alma Mater_ is the last thing she needs.

 

 _Alicia Zimmermann Worries Son Can’t Make it: Relapse Imminent?_ would be a worse headline, she reminds herself as she draws back her shoulders, sits up straight and turns the key in the ignition. And untrue.

 

She knows Jack can do this. What she’s not sure of is if she can let go.

 

Two years stretch between the days she paced that sterile room, Jack laying still beneath the blanket, and where she sits now with the August heat and the soft breeze curling through the car window.

 

Alicia’s pretty sure twenty won’t be enough for her to forget the dread and helplessness of the two days before Jack was lucid. The memory is carved into her bones, seeped deep in her heart. It wakes her, some nights. But up until now she’s been able to pad quietly down the hall to nudge open Jack’s door, stand for a moment to make sure his waking wasn’t some sort of cruel dream.

 

In the months following his overdose, all of them had gone to therapy. Together as a family and on their own. She’d put her foot down there with Bobby, scheduled a couple of marriage counseling sessions as well.

 

_There’s nothing wrong with our marriage, Alicia._

_There’s about to be._

_You’re overreacting._

_We stopped communicating, Robert. About Jack, about the hard things._ She’d stood at the foot of the bed they’d shared for 23 years, voice hard and heart unwavering. _Do you still love me?_

 

 _Of course I do._ His voice had quieted, as he rubbed a hand over his face. _Do you…have your feelings. Have they changed?_

She’d shaken her head. _No. But I want to do better for us too._ She’d moved forward then, wrapped her arms around him and pressed a cheek to his chest. Felt the shaky way he’d drawn in air as he folded her in his arms. _I want to be 90 and still sure of us. But we have work to do._

_Never been afraid of a little hard work._

_Me either._ She’d leaned back, grinned up at him.

 

_It’s not just about Jack._

_No. It’s about us too._

_Okay._ He drew her in, pressed a cheek to the top of her head. _Make the appointment._

It hadn’t been their fault, what happened with Jack, but they had failed him in a number of ways. And, they’d found over the course of time that they’d failed each other in a lot of small ways too. Maybe over time those ways would have grown and…

 

But instead they’d learned how to talk again, about more than just the easy things. She and Bobby, and the both of them and Jack.

 

Jack.

 

Who had moved into a dorm room with a handful of boxes and his hockey gear. Jack, who was ready to start on the next step of building a life for himself.

 

A life he wanted.

 

Two years ago, the unrelenting pressure and scrutiny had been too heavy a weight for her son to handle. Today… he had chosen this, she reminded herself. He had chosen this school, this team. Had researched and applied and visited the school last year to make sure it was as good in person as it had been through her stories and on paper.

 

He’d sat at the end of the couch, hands clasped between his knees as he leaned forward and told her about their History program of all things.

 

 _I want to play hockey again, Maman._ His voice was soft. _I know you’re…worried. But I want to play hockey again. I also want to learn_ , his tone turned shy.

 

She couldn’t have said no. Had no right—though he’d moved back home after the hospital he wasn’t a child anymore. Wasn’t even a teenager.

 

When the acceptance letter had come, she’d buried her concerns behind joy and saved them for her own therapy sessions.

 

So.

 

Her eyes track the campus, the buildings and ground changed just enough from her own years that it seems as if she is driving through some sort of dream version of her past. Samwell had been everything she could have hoped for when she’d attended. It had led her to a career she adores, a man she loves, a son that became her everything. She could only hope it will do the same for Jack.

 

 _Take care of him_ , she thinks as she slows at the entrance gate. Ignores the ringing of her phone even as she catches her husband’s name flash across the screen.

 

She takes a deep breath. Holds it. _Please, take care of him._

 

Exhales, as she turns left onto the main road, answering her phone on the last ring.

 

“Bobby? I’m heading out now. No, I had to pick up another set of sheets before I left, I had no confidence he would do it on his own once I was gone…”

**Author's Note:**

> After posting 'Inhale' there was part of my brain that just wasn't done with Alicia and all her feelings. Two years goes by in a flash and I couldn't imagine Jack going to Samwell would be easy for her. 
> 
> Bob, in this fic, isn't there largely because it served the purpose of letting me play with Alicia and Alicia alone...but also because I imagine as the sports teams were the ones who were moving in early for conditioning, no one wanted the extra scrutiny of having 'Bad Bob' on campus. Jack's ready to start a life for Jack and that means maybe not starting it with his hockey legend of a father stirring up the campus.


End file.
